Nora C. England

Nora England is a specialist in anthropological linguistics whose scholarship and educational efforts among the Maya of Guatemala have contributed to Mayan ethnic revitalization.

Over the past twenty years, England has trained more than 100 indigenous Mayan linguists, who are now working in education, applied linguistics, and development. Often limited by their impoverished, agrarian backgrounds, the Maya people have frequently been excluded from higher education and professions by an ethnic division of labor that marginalizes native peoples. England’s students are among the first generation of Maya who have had any significant post-high-school education. England has written A Grammar of Mam, A Mayan Language (1983) and edits the Journal of Mayan Linguistics and Papers in Mayan Linguistics. Her books include Autonomâia de los Idiomas Mayas: Historia e Identidad (1992) and Maya’ Chii’: Los Idiomas Mayas de Guatemala (1993), both published by the Mayan press, Cholsamaj.

England is the director of the Center for Indigenous Languages of Latin America and a professor of linguistics at the University of Texas, Austin. She previously held teaching positions at Mississippi State University and the University of Iowa.

England received a B.A. (1967) from Bryn Mawr College and an M.A. (1971) and a Ph.D. (1975) from the University of Florida.